Chrysanthemums and Cranes
by carved in the sand
Summary: There's another thank you in the air between them, and this time, it's not a goodbye. - SasuSaku


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"Sakura."

"S-sasuke-kun?

He smiles, just a bit. Sasuke steps into the light, dressed in a formal black montsuki that hung on his frame perfectly. A sigh fights it's way into her throat and it's _so_ hard to keep quiet.

Sakura gawks at her childhood love unattractively, Ino's frame at one side, and a large bottle of champagne in the other. Shikamaru is helping her carry the blonde back home, dressed in similar formal wear. Kakashi's wedding was filled with laughter and excitement and plenty of expensive alcohol that she wisely chose control herself around, but was lucky enough to sneak away with a bottle from the kitchens. People were walking through the streets dazedly, some as drunk as Ino, and some even more so. A Hokage's wedding was something to be celebrated fully, and Konoha did just that.

"Did you just get here?" Sakura asks, searching for any hint of change, drinking him in greedily for several minutes until she remembers herself. Her eyes narrow dangerously at him. "Could you take Ino home for me, Shikamaru?"

"Don't wanna," Ino mumbles in protest as Sakura maneuvers her weight fully onto her teammate. Shikamaru nods as he bends down to carry her in his arms fully. Her lavender kimono will surely wrinkle in the morning. "Put m'down, Shika."

"Come on, you drunk," Shikamaru said. They walk into the darkness amid the tall buildings, high trees, and pale moonlight. The baleful look he gives Sasuke could have made her laugh if she wasn't so upset.

Sakura watches them go with a tired sigh before frowning at Sasuke - he returns it with a blank expression of his own. It's somewhat difficult to cross her arms with the trailing sleeves of her pastel blue furisode, but she manages.

"I can't believe you missed your own sensei's wedding!" Sakura snapped in a low voice, pointing an accusatory finger in his face. "I can't believe you!"

It's springtime now, and the air is warm around them. The street lights bathe them in soft yellow light, and through it she can see the strain in his shoulders at her abruptness. There are dark circles under his eyes that have not been present in all the times she's known him. Still, he's tanned now, a healthy pallor to his skin that makes her feel like he's been taking care of himself. There's no anger or sorrow or darkness haunting his eyes either. The longer hair that falls into his face, the taller frame, and the broader shoulders are apart of more superficial changes she refuses to ignore.

He is beautiful, heartbreakingly so, and she doubted that would ever change. It still hits her just the same.

"Sorry," he mutters, thoroughly reprimanded by just a few words.

The guilt is clear as day on his face. Why isn't Naruto this easy to scold?

"You _better_ have gotten them a amazing present. How could you miss this once in a life time opportunity?" Sakura continues on, slipping past him, their shoulders brushing as she makes her way down the street. He follows without hesitation. "We got to see his face! And he was _so_ handsome."

"No fish lips?" Sasuke asks. There's restrained amusement in his tone that makes her snort. "No scars? No buck teeth?"

"You wish," Sakura retorted defensively. "He's way more handsome than you, actually. Imagine if he never wore his mask when we were a genin team...I would have never had a crush on you if I got to look at that kind of a man every day."

It's Sasuke's turn to snort now. "You wish," he echoes her.

Sakura dissolved into giggles, boyish and sharp and loud, that ring through the air around them. Sasuke's own deep chuckles are a soft undertone beside her. The sound wraps her in warmth for a few minutes - the last time she'd heard him laugh, he'd been raging mad, ready to destroy everything she loved.

This laughter is easy and kind. It's hard to fight the tears stinging in her eyes, but she manages.

It's strange how much things have changed, how easily they speak, but it's expected. He'll be twenty four in three months time. She's still praying he'll finish this year happy.

When their laughter dies, Sakura gives a little shrug. The champagne bottle in her hand feels cool and welcoming in her grip. "He looked really happy, you know," she murmured, tucking a lock of her short pink hair behind her ear. "I think he even blushed a couple times. He was just...I'm glad that he's going to start another family. A _new_ one. I'm glad he found happiness in another person like that."

"I wish I could have seen it," Sasuke said quietly. There is true regret in his voice that makes her heart ache - maybe scolding him wasn't even necessary. "I hope he forgives me."

"He definitely will. Naruto did," Sakura answered, almost teasing but not quite. Their sensei would be just as forgiving. And if he wasn't, which she doubted, he'd answer to _her_. "Have you seen him yet?"

"No. I got in the village about half an hour ago."

"How did you hear about the wedding?"

Sakura looked at him, the strong profile of his jaw and dark eyes and full lips. He scratched his chin absently. "I was in Earth Country for the past month. An old woman that ran a fruit stan in a civilian town was talking about the Hokage's wedding coming up in a couple days," he said drolly, a calculation in his eyes that makes her grin. "I didn't even know he was dating anyone. Who would want to spend the rest of their lives with that lazy pervert?"

"I mean, if he's a lazy pervert that's the strongest, most influential shinobi in the village that's secretly really hot, I would go for it," Sakura replied bluntly. "Kakashi's a catch."

"Kakashi's touched in the head." His face started twitching, as if he didn't know how to handle his next words. "Though that sounds rather hypocritical coming from me."

The pink haired girl stared at him with wide, disbelieving eyes. "Oh my god," she murmured. She shook with laughter. "I can't believe you just said that."

They laugh again, more genuinely this time, and Sakura nearly stumbles past her apartment building. There is a sudden, gripping aversion to head to sleep when she was dead tried only minutes ago. She stares up to the fourth floor balcony that she knows she would jump up to if her kimono wasn't so delicate.

 _What if I ripped something?_ Sakura thinks sarcastically to herself. She can't help a wide, silly grin. _We can't have that._

Yet, even if he walked her up all those stairs, just to say goodbye at her door, she would still be disappointed. It's been so _long_ since he visited. She wouldn't have him all to herself like this again.

"I don't want to go home yet," she blurts out, searching the streets for something until an idea comes to her head. Even in darkness like this, she can see the soft pink trees, as if glowing. "The sakuras are in bloom right now. Have you seen them yet?"

"No."

"Good."

The urge to grasp him by the arm, the hand, press against his shoulder to lead him forward doesn't come, and for that she is thankful. Sakura walks and knows he'll follow.

They walk through Konoha with more conversation, sometimes bawdy, sometimes teasing, sometimes annoyed with each other. Before they know it, they're stepping into a field of pastel pink petals, floating over their heads, cushioning their steps under their feet. Sakura reaches out to catch a few petals in her left hand to press down on them for the feel of their softness against her callouses. She opens her palm and lets them float to the ground once more.

She isn't sure how long she stands in place, breathing in life, the transience of the flowers she's named for. Sasuke leans down to look at her with a decidedly neutral expression.

Sakura snaps out of it.

"Ah, sorry," she mumbles, face feeling hot. She bullies him into sitting beside her against one of the several tree trunks. He sighs, rolls his eyes, but indulges her nonetheless. They shuffle onto the ground, and she tries not to be annoyed at how much more _graceful_ he is than her. It only mildly surprises her that his missing arm doesn't impede his poise in the slightest; what should she have expected?

Sasuke smirks as he offers her a hand to help her down, and Sakura pouts to herself as she takes it with another blush.

"I-it's just the kimono," Sakura mutters.

He isn't convinced in the slightest. "Of course."

Sakura sets down her champagne bottle off to the side and unpins her short, sleek hair from the top of her head. She tucks the jeweled pins into the folds of her furoside and lets soft pink strands of hair flutter into her vision with the wind. Sasuke shifts out of his travelling cloak and folds it into his lap as he stares out into the trees.

They watch the petals fall in the blackness of the night sky with slow, even breaths. She isn't nervous here, with their knees pressed together and elbows brushing. She doesn't miss him.

"I always... _underestimate_ how much I missed Konoha," Sasuke muttered suddenly - when had they lapsed into silence? "Nowhere really compares, I think."

"You say that, but I know you'll be on the move again by morning," Sakura drawls knowingly. His attachment to this place he'd once hated with all his heart means little to the wanderlust he'd picked up in his adolescence.

"Maybe," Sasuke replies noncommittally. Sakura glances at him for a moment as a smile spreads wide across his face - it makes her heart skip a beat at how unaware, how awkward it is, beautiful and painful, as if the muscles of his mouth have forgotten. "I should head back to Earth Country."

Her eyes go wide at his words as her skin grows cold - for a split second, she thinks about terrible, petty things. The look on his face, likes he's thinking about something he adores, making her stomach turn. It makes her feel twelve and small all over again.

"What was in Earth Country?" she asks as smoothly as possible. Of course, it came out too stiff, too uncertain.

"A mental health clinic for children."

Her mouth opens, as if to speak, but her mind is too blank to form words. Sakura turns more fully to him. His smile _grows_. It doesn't make sense.

"A- a what?"

It's there that Sasuke talks, explains in this brisk way of his, leaving her starving for details. The woman who ran and funded the hospital was a retired kunoichi from Iwagakure, well into her sixties and too mean to be a grandmother of twelve. She'd inherited her husband's fortune after he'd passed away, and decided to move away from her village to create the facility. She'd taken care of thousands of shinobi children in just the past year.

"The...the past year," Sakura mumbles, her heart beating painfully hart in her chest. Warmth floods everywhere.

"She said she got the idea from a kunoichi from Konoha," Sasuke says swiftly. She sees his mouth twitching, holding back his smile. "A...passionate, strange looking girl who tried convincing the Tsuchikage to fund a facility within the village."

The warmth pauses.

"Strange looking?"

"I didn't say she was a nice woman."

Sakura sighs as she smiles unwillingly. Strange looking she may have been, but Sakura had gone before the Tsuchikage alongside Ino and Kakashi with her heart on her sleeve, trying to convince Iwa's leader of the importance of a facility that catered to youth mental health. He'd just barely humored her, if not outright told her that she had her head in the clouds. Her status as a world reknown war hero and a disciple of two different Hokage did nothing for her.

She gasped for a moment. "How- how did she hear me? How did she hear what I was talking about?" Sakura said. "It was a private meeting."

"I don't know. You were probably loud enough for her to hear from outside," Sakura replied, verbally shrugging. The smile was gone now, and Sakura felt herself wilting at his words.

To have someone be inspired by her, a woman who probably held immense status within Iwa, see her as something wild and strange was a blow to her ego. She stared at the flower petals as she pressed her glossy lips together and refrained from sighing.

"Her youngest granddaughter lost a limb on a mission the winter before. She'd been tortured for information." Sakura looked up to see Sasuke tilting his head, staring off into the distance. It's suddenly too hard to breathe. "She had schizophrenic episodes for months, and no one knew how to handle it. The facility you talked about...made for children who've been through trauma...it gave her hope. For the first time in a long time. She wanted me to give you her thanks."

Sakura pressed her lips together as tears stung in her eyes.

"I...I think I'd like to thank her too," she said quietly. It was hard to smile, but she managed. "For believing in me and her granddaughter."

He smirks. "She would have been an idiot not to." Sakura can't control sighing at _that_.

"I mean it. I'm proud of you," Sasuke replied confidently. Sakura has to look away, lean into herself, shyness closing up her throat. "People know your name everywhere, Sakura. For the best reasons."

She spends a few moments pressing her hands together in her lap, thumb running along the patterns of her furisode. The chrysanthemums stretch out on thin, spindly, soft brown branches with bright pink petals and a yellow center all over the soft blue fabric. They are full of life, lively, bursting with the newness of spring - stronger than a cherry blossom, with petals that will last through the summer. The white cranes that stretch out over the branches have dark legs and bright gold eyes and textured feathers make her smile.

They look ready to take off in flight, head cocked towards some invisible current in the air. The sight of them make her brave.

"Do you know why I became a medical ninja?" Sakura murmured, taking a deep breath of courage before turning back to meet Sasuke's gaze. "Because I...the Forest of Death made me feel so weak. I knew I needed to grow strong to catch up to you, to protect you, but...if I could have taken away even a _little_ bit of your pain back then..."\

She'd had nightmares about that godforsaken forest for _years_. The expression on Sasuke's face as Orochimaru sank the Curse Mark into his skin, his agonized screams, the slow panic of not knowing whether he would survive - all of it had made a lasting impression on her. Even if she'd been able to protect him with her own strength, she knew it wouldn't have been enough for her.

Tsunade was a goddess to her twelve year old eyes. A woman able to destroy, to demolish, with the same hands she mended with. A woman she desperately wanted to become.

Sasuke smiles again, but this time it's bitter and hateful. "You wouldn't have needed to do any of that if I was here, beside you," he says quietly. "Like I should have been."

His words make her entire body still. She doesn't know what to say to that, or how to tell him no, because a part of it was true. But was that a bad thing? He'd believed that leaving, avenging his clan, was what he needed to do, at the cost of himself. His revenge had always been a selfless goal, even when he'd made Konoha a target. She would never fault him for that. All the night she spent up, thinking about him, being heart broken, not _once_ did she blame him.

"You can apologize," Sakura half whispers, reaching over to pull the champagne bottle lying on the grass into her lap, not truly thinking, "by taking me with you one day."

Sasuke looks up, shocked. Her face goes red _again_.

"We- we would...I'd like to be by your side for a little while longer, Sasuke-kun," She clutches the champagne bottle with a tired smile, off into the distance of the small park. What else did she expect from him? "So when you've made peace with your past, Sasuke-kun...when you've done what you needed to do...take me with you."

He turned to stare at her, resting his chin against his shoulder. His gaze was soft and open - a vulnerability he does not show anyone. Her breathing hitches a little at the blatant trust he is giving her now, at how terribly handsome he is, at how she wants to fold him into her arms and never let go. She can't explain the feeling of seeing this boy, this beloved friend of her's, this old love who still put butterflies in her stomach, giving her such an honest look.

He reaches over to poke her forehead like the first time he left, and it makes her face hotter, dusting a splotchy blush all over her cheeks and nose.

"I promise," Sasuke murmurs back.

She doesn't say anything. There's another _thank you_ in the air between them, and this time, it doesn't make her want to cry.

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 **A/N:** _Remember to review!_


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